


The Life You Live (Will Be Your Own)

by Katbelle



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 21st Century, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, It's a reincarnation after all not a modern AU, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Memories, Most characters are not listed so have fun de-anoning them, Reincarnation, Things are different, Troll writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:05:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michel and Sébastien are living a happy and content life with their foster daughter. Then, suddenly, long forgotten memories come flooding back and they have to deal with the outcome.</p><p>Now with <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/745689/chapters/1401758">Author's spoilery commentary to the work</a> which includes a full list of characters with explanations!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this reincarnation!AU prompt](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/9761.html?thread=309793#t309793) at the Les Mis kink meme. Most of the characters used in the fic are not listed as half of the fun is guessing who is who (or isn't). I hope you enjoy this exercise!
> 
> Dedicated to my wonderful **Tannis** , who puts up with my bouncing ideas off her.

**The Life You Live (Will Be Your Own)**

It starts innocently enough. 

Michel is coming back from a meeting with his promotor when someone grabs his bag and runs with it. Michel, momentarily stunned, has no idea what to do; the only thought on his mind is that the professor's book in his bag is worth more than entirety of Michel's savings and his apartment combined. After a second, he tries chasing the guy; after two, he gives up and gives in to desperate worrying. After three, he sees someone catch the thief's collar, punch him in the face and take the bag, all with a perfectly disinterested expression on the stranger's face.

Said stranger takes out his cell and makes a call; he then grabs the thief's collar and drags him towards Michel. He hands him the bag back, all the while not loosening his grip on the poor guy's jacket.

"I believe this is yours, monsieur," he stranger says. Michel fumbles for appropriate words as he takes his bag. He does so clumsily, like he does everything, and his fingers brush against the man's. They both look at their hands, then at each other.

It's love at first sight, for them.

***

At the police station, the stranger turns out to be Sébastien Bonner, in the rank of lieutenant. Michel thanks him again for rescuing his bag and the man grumbles, again, that he was merely doing his duty. Urged by an ill-advised impulse, Michel writes down his number on a pad of post-its that he always carries with him, and sticks it to the attempted robbery report that Sébastien hands him to sign. He feels like an idiot afterwards, but it's too late to go back to the police station and demand his mobile number to be returned to him.

On the other hand, he's not exactly surprised when Sébastien calls two days later and asks him out.

***

Sébastien is rich, that much Michel figures out pretty quickly. He's filthy rich and very lonely; he's proud and hardened, and rough at the edges, like he's seen one thing too many. But, first of all, he's _rich_.

"Why would you become a policeman when you could have been anyone," Michel asks one night, when they're lying huddled on a small bed in his equally small apartment. They always end up at his place, rarely at Sébastien's; Sébastien's apartment in the city centre is enormous but cold and impersonal, it lacks warmth and the feeling that someone's living there. That's because no one is living there, in reality, Michel muses. Sébastien once admitted that, prior to meeting Michel, he'd often sleep at a battered couch in his boss' office, that he'd avoid going to his place at all cost. It was just an apartment, after all, he'd say. Home is with Michel, who makes sure that Sébastien eats and sleeps and doesn't die because he's been too wrapped up in his newest case to take care of himself.

Michel is good at taking care of other people. He takes care of Sébastien, when he allows that. He takes care of his neighbours' little daughter too, and Nina spends more time with him than with her parents. Sometimes he selfishly wishes that the woman from child protection services would come back and would take Nina away, and then maybe he could take her in and give her a life that she deserves.

He then remembers what it was like, growing up without his parents, being moved from one distant relative to another, and he realizes that he's being selfish.

Michel is soft. He's kind and shy, and he'd rather spend time with his books or in the archives than with people. He's not the kind of person who attracts friends; he can be nice when he wants to, but everything is French revolutions with him and that tends to put people off. That's another of his quirks that Michel would love to blame his brother for.

"I've always wanted to be a policeman," Sébastien answers after a long silence. "It was like… destiny, you know?" 

Sébastien's colleagues often joke that Michel is the last person on Earth that Sébastien could fall in love with. 

Michel likes to think that this is what makes them perfect for each other.

***

The year of Michel's thirtieth birthday brings forth brilliant developments.

The first one sees Nina's parents finally locked up behind bars - where they belong, in Michel's humble opinion - and Nina on his doorstep, telling the child protection services lady that this man is the person supposed to take care of her if anything were to happen. A temporary situations turns into a permanent one soon after, when gross mistreatment of a child is proven to Nina's parents and when Michel's brother does one good thing in his life and pulls some strings to let Nina stay.

So Nina stays.

The second one comes six months later, when Sébastien leaves a Tiffany's ring box on the nightstand and waits for Michel to figure out what he means. Michel does. 

It's a yes.

***

"I will pee on everything you love if you hurt my papa," Nina says during breakfast the next day when they tell her the news. Michel chokes on his coffee and glares at the girl. He's not sure where she learnt this vocabulary and he's not sure if he approves.

Sébastien, on the other hand, regards Nina with an uttermost seriousness. He nods.

"Understood."

Nina beams.

***

Sébastien gets a promotion, Michel finishes his PhD and they move to Montreuil, where Nina gets to go to a much better school and Michel ends up a history teacher with a curious barricade fetish.

On the first day at work, he meets Fanny.

***

Fanny. Fanny Roche. How could one start describing Fanny Roche?

Fanny Roche was, in Michel's view, the only reasonable person in the whole school. A young physics teacher with a nasty divorce under her belt, she was funny and no-nonsense and genuinely cared about her students. What was additionally amazing about Fanny Roche was that she like musicals and didn't mind Michel's enthusiastic blabbing of why the revolution of 1832 failed as spectacularly as it did. That made her the perfect friend material.

That also made Sébastien roll his eyes, but Sébastien was always of the view that Michel had too little friends. Nina, at least, liked her.

Fanny Roche became a friend of the family.

***

Soon after, everything goes to hell. 

***

It starts with a police chase that Sébastien takes part in, and an arrest gone wrong. There's a shooting and a fight, and while Sébastien doesn't get shot - thank God for that, Michel thinks - he does get hit on the head pretty bad. Michel and Nina go to the hospital to pick him up; Nina runs into the ER screaming and clings to Sébastien, who pats her on the head awkwardly. There's nothing physically wrong with him, the doctor ensures Michel, and the only effect of the blow might be a headache. Michel is relieved; he hates Sébastien's job, he hates it with a passion. He knows how important it is to his partner, but he can't help himself. He hates the crappy pay, he hates the late hours and all the papers, he hates the danger, he hates that every morning he worries if this might be the last time he sees Sébastien alive.

"Ready to go?" he asks when he's done talking to the doctor and Nina has finally let go of Sébastien's neck. Sébastien starts at that and he looks at Michel in surprise, like he was seeing him for the first time.

It's been a long and tiring day, so Michel pays it no mind.

***

But it doesn't stop.

***

Sometimes, sometimes it's almost like it was Before; Sébastien smiles at him brightly and ruffles his hair, Sébastien snuggles close to him in bed and keeps a protective arm around him as if in hopes to never let Michel leave the bed and him. Sometimes it's almost enough to make Michel forget.

Most times it's not. Most times, now, Sébastien looks at him with confusion and borderline suspicion, the same look he usually gives that bunch of anarchists in Michel's class. Like he can't trust him. Like he doesn't know what Michel is doing here. Like he's not sure what he himself is doing here.

Nina picks up on that too. She observes Sébastien with narrowed eyes and hisses at him like an angry cat whenever he gets too cold and distant in Michel's presence. She grows very protective of her papa and that both saddens Michel and warms his heart.

***

They argue. Not that they didn't before, but Before they never argued for real. Now they argue about most trivial things: about whose turn it was to wash the dishes, about Michel's books lying around their apartment, about Nina's blue dress and the abundance of Nina's dolls.

There are nights when Sébastien prefers to sleep on the couch in the living room.

***

The doctor says that it couldn't have been that blow during the chase, that this must have been in Sébastien all along.

***

One day, they argue about bread.

Nina has taken some to feed the ducks and there's none left, at that's it, they're arguing. It quickly develops into a proper fight and cruel words are shouted.

"If you're so unhappy," Michel yells, too angry to control himself, "just leave! I don't give a shit! You could jump off a bridge for all I care!"

Sébastien doesn't retort. He stares at Michel in mute shock; then he grabs his coat and leaves the apartment, slamming the door shut.

Michel curls into a ball on the couch and weeps. Nina pads out of her room and lies down next to him, hugs him and holds him throughout the night.

***

Sébastien doesn't come back in the morning. Nor does he come back the next day.

***

Sébastien's boss tells him that Sébastien has taken a personal leave and didn't state where he was going.

"What is wrong with you?" Fanny asks a week later. "You've been distracted lately. You haven't even noticed that our resident anarchists have tried to upstage a revolution in the cafeteria."

"Sébastien's--gone."

"What do you mean 'gone'?"

Michel shrugs.

"We had a fight," he admits. "I--might have told him that I wouldn't care if he left. Or jumped off a bridge," he adds, quieter. Fanny raises her brows.

"And do you honestly think that that would make him leave?"

No, he doesn't. But he has no idea what was it that made Sébastien act like he did and take that fight for an excuse to leave. At the very least all of Sébastien's stuff was still at their apartment so he would have to come back at some point.

"Sébastien is nothing like my ex," Fanny pats him on the back. "He loves you. He's crazy about you. He would follow you anywhere you went."

Michel tries to smile. It's not wide or bright, but there was an attempt and Fanny winks.

"That's kind of creepy, you know?"

She kisses him on the forehead.

"I'll come round in the evening, we'll make dinner and watch _Mamma Mia_."

***

The atmosphere at home is less miserable when Fanny comes over. Together with Nina they make quische-quische from Fanny's mother's recipe. But it's still nowhere near as nice and comfortable as the dinner parties Michel and Sébastien usually host, and at some point - when they've eaten and watched the movie, and when Michel has put Nina to sleep - Fanny slips out onto the balcony. Michel is cleaning up the dishes so he only hears parts of the conversation.

"… swear to God, Sébastien… you will wish you'd jumped off that bridge… call."

Fanny comes back inside and smiles at him. They sit back on the sofa and she scoops closer to him, puts her head on his shoulder. They don't bother with turning on the TV.

"He'll call you," Fanny says. "I think he values his life too much to risk my wrath."

"Thank you." Michel sighs. "Maybe we just weren't supposed to be."

"Crap," Fanny asserts. "Maybe not everyone is going to be forever happy like my parents, but you two were made for each other. Everyone who knows you knows that. Sébastien, the big bag of dicks that he is, also knows that."

"I appreciate you coming over, Cosette."

She kisses his shoulder.

"Don't mention it."

***

There is a call, during Michel's lunch break the next day.

_"Hey."_

"Hi," Michel answers. There's about a million things he wants to ask and another million things he wants to say. Where are you, are you hurt, are you angry, are you sad, when can I see you, when are you coming home, are you coming home?

 _"Co--Fanny called,"_ Sébastien says before Michel has a chance to voice his wild thoughts. Yes, Fanny called. Good Fanny, lovely Fanny, his best friend Fanny whom Sébastien never really liked.

"Yes. She did."

And that's the only reason Sébastien is calling _him_ , isn't it, because Fanny called and Fanny threatened him because Fanny cares. 

Sébastien is supposed to care too.

 _"I'm in Montreuil,"_ Sébastien offers after the silence has become unbearable. Michel's heart skips a bit and his insides decide that it's time for an energetic samba. Sébastien is in Montreuil, he's _home_ , he's coming home and Michel can breathe freely now, and Nina won't pretend that she's not sulking, and--

"Will you be home for dinner?" Michel breathes hopefully into his mobile. He'll let the _terminale_ class earlier, his young anarchists will surely thank him, he'll pick Nina up, they'll get home and Sébastien will be there, they'll eat dinner together and then he and Sébastien will talk--

 _"Not our Montreuil,"_ Sébastien explains, and Michel's shoulders drop. He hears Sébastien swallow before saying, _"the Pas-de-Calais Montreuil."_

Pas-de-Calais, Pas-de-Calais… Michel looks at the map of France that hangs in his office. It's not an up-to-date map, it's the old departamental division of 1789, but it's still functional and yes, there it is, the Pas-de-Calais Montreuil, Montreuil-sur-Mer. About an hour away from the Belgian border, give or take.

"Why are you there?" he asks. He's not even suspicious, mostly curious.

On the other side, Sébastien sighs in what oddly sounds like disappointment.

 _"It's--complicated,"_ he doesn't explain. _"Personal."_

"What personal business can you have there? You've never been there," and that Michel knows for a fact, "and both your parents were born in Nice. Where, coincidentally, you were also born."

Another sigh.

 _"You wouldn't understand."_ Michel wants to yell 'try me!', he even takes a breath to do just that when Sébastien speaks again. _"I have to go."_

The will to scream and shout evaporates from Michel immediately. He drags a hand across his face tiredly. He could still say a million things. He could still ask a million questions.

"I love you."

 _"I,"_ Sébastien hesitates, _"know."_

Then he hangs up.

***

When a knock on the door interrupts Michel in grading papers a few days later, he half expects Sébastien's sorrowful and apologetic face, and is half sure that Fanny decided to come again, just to cheer him up. What he is not prepared to see is his brother in his full glory, down to the Armani suit, stubborn set of his jaw, keen eyes and wild golden curls.

"Lucien."

"May I come in?" the man asks and Michel is tempted to tell him 'no' and shut the door in his face, all for about half a minute. In the end he sighs and lets his brother in.

Lucien grimaces in disgust when he sees the apartment, Nina's toys lying around, Michel's books lying around, the keys to Sébastien's bike lying on the shelf in the hall, exactly where he left them. He lets Michel take his - undoubtly expensive - coat and enters the living room. Soon Nina peeks out from her room.

"Hi, uncle Lucy," he greets him warmly, with a small smile. Lucien's answering expression cannot be called a smile.

"Child," he nods at the girl. Lucien doesn't like Nina; he uses every opportunity to remind everyone that Nina is not Michel's daughter, that she is simply his ward, at least in the eyes of Lucien's precious law. That's why Michel has banned Lucien from interacting with her; Nina, the optimistic girl that she is, tries to make friends with Lucien still. Yet again, however, she senses no good will to talk in the man and retreats back to her room, closing the door. Michel crosses his arms on his chest and looks at his brother expectantly.

"What do you want?"

Lucien dares to look hurt at that question.

"I can't be concerned with my baby brother's well-being?"

"The way you were concerned with my well-being after mum died?"

Lucien and Michel have never had a great relationship, they were far too different for that and the age gap was too great. Where Michel was young and shy, Lucien was charismatic, brave and strong, born to be a leader; he devoted himself to his work for the government and he never had time to indulge his younger brother, or to even take care of him after their mother's untimely death. He allowed Michel to be bumped from one creepy aunt to another great-uncle because he was too busy with his own work. On good days, when Michel was feeling surprisingly affectionate and generous towards his brother, he'd say that Lucien was the French government personified and that the French government had no time to baby orphaned boys. Mostly, though, he was angry and hurt by Lucien's decisions, and he would never forgive him, just like he would never forget.

"Touché." Lucien looks around the apartment. "I already know the answer, but I'm still going to ask: where is that disaster of a man you've ruined your life for?"

"Away," Michel snaps. Lucien nods in satisfaction.

"Told you so." He sits on the sofa and waves his hand in the general direction of the kitchen, indicating that he wants a drink and that he wants it now. "You could have done much better than a mentally imbalanced cop with anger management issues."

"Sébastien didn't exactly have what you could call an easy life." Michel rummages through the cupboards in search for that bourbon he knows Sébastien keeps for bad days, "He saw his parents get killed, you know."

"My point exactly. You're wasting your life with him. By now you could have been a professor and--"

"Are you here to criticize my life choices," Michel asks, "or do you have anything constructive to say?"

"They are awful life choices," Lucien says. He coughs when Michel glares at him, "but I don't want to argue about this _again_. I'm here about your--"

"Husband," Michel offers.

"-- _partner_ ," Lucien finishes, emphasizing the last word. Yes, of course. Lucien, everything-by-the-book Lucien. A civil partnership, not a marriage. Partner, not a husband. Proper labels, proper laws, Lucien and his government.

Fuck him, Michel thinks.

"My husband is no concern of yours."

"He is, brother of mine, if he gets sketchy and leaves you without an explanation, and breaks your heart. I keep a close eye on you," he adds after seeing Michel's confused face.

"Did you have my apartment bugged?"

"I am neither confirming nor denying." Which is as close to an admission as Michel will ever get.

"Are you out of your mind?!"

Lucien rolls his eyes.

"I simply do not like Bonner. Never have, never will. And I most certainly don't trust him with you." He clears his throat. "So, where's that drink?"

"Fuck you."

"I'll pass." Lucien gets up and goes to the kitchen. He randomly opens a cupboard and takes out a bottle of bourbon with a satisfied 'ah!'. Michel hates him. "He's in Toulon, you know."

"You've bugged his phone too?"

"Please," Lucien looks at him as if Michel was a particularly dim-witted child, and pours himself the drink, "I am simply monitoring his professional moves."

"What?" Professional? Michel frowns. The trip to Montreuil was supposed to be personal, but this one is not? What kind of professional business could lead Sébastien across the country?

"He accessed the city archives in Toulon," Lucien explains. "He used his police clearance to get his hands on some really old prison records."

Prison records. On the other side of the country. Michel sags onto the sofa and fixes his gaze on the tiled floor.

"Why would he do that?"

The floor doesn't answer.

"How should I know? He's the love of your life, not mine," Lucien says and it's not helpful either.

***

"On the one hand, it's really cute that your brother is so protective of you and cares for you," Fanny says. "On the other, though, his methods are kind of creepy, no thank you."

"He had my apartment bugged. _Bugged_ , Cosette, for who knows how long."

"Yeah, it is definitely creepy." Fanny drums her fingers on the table. They're sitting in a café at the metro station, waiting for Fanny's mother. "And what's up with 'Cosette' anyway? Is this some nickname that I'm not aware of?"

"What?"

"That's the second time you've called me 'Cosette', I'm just curious."

"I never called you 'Cosette'," Michel denies. That would be ridiculous. Fanny is Fanny, he never needed a nickname for her; even if he did, he'd never come up with anything as silly as 'Cosette'. The sole notion is idiotic. 'Cosette' sounded like someone delicate and petite and weak and blond; Fanny is sassy and strong enough to kick her drug-addicted ex's ass.

She is painfully blond though.

"You most certainly did," Fanny insists with a laugh. Michel shakes his head and mouths 'nope'. "Fine, whatever, it's just a nickname. We're here to talk about Sébastien's mysterious professional trip to Toulon."

Michel has been thinking about it the whole weekend. So far he's got nothing.

"Maybe it's about his parents?" Fanny suggests. "He's from Nice, that's not so far away."

"That's what I thought at first," Michel admits, "that maybe he finally got a lead on that case." 

Of course he thought about that. The deaths of Monsieur and Madame Bonner were still a mystery, after all these years still no one knew why anyone would break into the Bonners' residence and why they would shoot the businessman and his wife in cold blood and spare the couple's teenaged son. Michel wished Sébastien would find his answers and would finally put the case to rest.

"But you don't think so anymore."

Michel shakes his head.

"Lucien said that Sébastien was interested in old records. _Really_ old records, like, nineteenth century records. Nineteenth century is my area of expertise, not his. And it definitely has nothing to do with his parents."

"How sure can we be of what your brother says?"

"Lucien is douchebag, but he's a douchebag who's never wrong."

"That kind is the worst." Fanny waves at someone behind Michel's back. "Mum, over here!"

Michel has never met Madame Felicia Roche before, but he has heard plenty. A lovely woman with a heart of gold, a retired tailor, a great cook, wonderful mother, happy wife. Sometimes Fanny laughed that her mother has hit the jackpot, as if fate was trying to recompense her for something. Michel liked to think that Felicia Roche was simply a very lucky woman.

"Mum," Fanny takes her mother's hand when the elderly woman gets to their table, "this is Mich--"

" _You_ ," Felicia says, interrupting her daughter. Her eyes widen almost comically, fear mixes on her face with anger and contempt, but mostly, she's just surprised. As surprised as Sébastien was, all those months ago at the hospital.

Michel exchanges a quick look with a baffled Fanny, and tries to remember if he ever met Felicia Roche, if he ever almost knocked her over in his haste, if he ever didn't vacate his seat for her on a bus or the metro, if he ever bought a book which she might have wanted too. He comes up empty-handed.

"Awfully nice to meet you, madame," he tries to salvage the situation. He takes Felicia's other hand and presses a small kiss to her knuckles. "Fanny has told me a great deal about you."

"And she about you," Felicia Roche admits and she doesn't look angry anymore. Just borderline surprised. "I just--had someone else in mind."

By which she means he's much older than her daughter and wears a Batman tee. Michel smiles.

"I get that a lot."

They exchange a few pleasantries more, Felicia Roche drinks a cup of tea, and then she and Fanny leave for a shopping spree in Paris. Michel settles their bill and goes to pick up Nina from the school.

There's a tiny voice at the back of his mind which whispers that Felicia Roche didn't mean the Batman t-shirt at all.

***

Nina is invited to a sleepover at her best friend's place, Fanny goes to visit her parents and Lucien is, thankfully, back to being his disinterested self. Michel has the whole apartment to himself so he breaks out all the wine they have stashed, puts on _Moulin Rouge_ and decides to wallow in self-pity.

His phone buzzes around midnight. A text. Michel prays to God that it's not Nina because he's way too drunk to drive and get her. Usually it's Sébastien's duty, and he's--oh. Speak of the devil.

_Do you believe in reincarnation?_

Michel snorts. An idiotic question. Most of the time he's not even sure if he believes in God; he sticks by that religion because it's what his creepy aunts taught him, and Sébastien knows that.

_Would you wanna talk to me if I said yes???_

He waits a few minutes for the reply.

_Probably, yes._

And then, a second later.

_Definitely._

Michel inhales sharply.

_Then YES._

***

There's radio silence after that. Maybe Sébastien is not as ready to talk as he thought.

***

Lucien calls during the weekend and asks for a meeting, to which Michel says yes, the idiot that he is. He could go to the university library, read up on Toulon, he reasons, maybe he'd find a clue as to what Sébastien is doing. Or he could take Nina to the natural history museum, to see that exposition on dinosaurs that she's been talking about non-stop since the sleepover at Gloria's. Either way, they go; briefly, Michel thinks about booking a room in a hotel, then decides against it. Lucien has an apartment in Paris, he won't be thrilled to have his brother and his niece spend the night but he won't kick them out either. Lucien should prove himself to be useful, not only irritating.

They meet in front of the prefecture of the police building; Lucien walks out of a building holding a slim file, which he then puts into his black leather suitcase. In the entrance, a security guard bows his head for him and Lucien merely nods. He fits so effortlessly there, within the structures and rules. Michel has always begrudgingly admired that in him; even Sébastien has, not that he would ever admit that.

"Hello, brother," Lucien greets him in his usual cold and to-the-point matter. "Hello, child."

"Hey, uncle Lucy."

Michel resists the urge to smile when Lucien growls at Nina. She is so smart, his daughter, she knows her way around, she reads people perfectly, she knows exactly what to say to rile them up and cheer them up. Michel's not sure when she found out that Lucien positively detested all diminutive forms of his name, all 'angel' and 'sweetie' pet names, but she did and decided that "uncle Lucy" was the way to go. Which, in Michel's opinion, is only fair; Lucien has never hidden his dislike of the girl.

"I need to drop something at the appellate court, you won't mind a slight detour, will you?" Lucien asks in an authoritative voice which invites no protest. Michel and Nina exchange looks, and Michel shrugs.

"No, we won't." Besides, a walk might do them good.

"Perfect. Then let's go shall we? The museum will not visit itself."

Michel doesn't even attempt to ask how the hell Lucien knows about the trip to the museum he and Nina have been planning. Together, they walk down the Quai de Gesvres, pass the Voie Georges Pompidou and get to the river. Michel regards it with distaste. Ugh. Contrary to what Sébastien has assumed on their third date - after he invited Michel to a dinner by the river and Michel's reaction can only be described as a mild freakout - Michel doesn't suffer from hydrophobia. It's just, he really disliked flowing water, anything with currents, actually. A pond, or a lake? Perfect. A sea or, God forbid, a river? No, thank you.

That might have had something to do with the fact that, once, when they were very young and vacationing by the sea, Lucien has left Michel sleeping on a floating mattress and a tide has taken him quite a bit away from the shore. 

Then again, maybe not.

"Papa, look, there are swans on the river!" Nina cries and she runs towards the edge of a bridge. Michel suddenly has a feeling that his heart jumped somewhere up to his throat.

"Nina, keep away from the parapet!"

"But _swans_ , papa!"

"Yes, dear brother, you've heard the girl," Lucien cuts in with a devious glint in his eyes that Michel doesn't like even a bit, "there are swans on the water. Come, Nina, I'll hold you up."

Lucien approaches the edge of the bridge as well and he picks Nina up, allows her to lean over the railings, _Christ_. Michel takes two cautious step towards the pair. Nina is giggling.

"Could we just go? Please? Now?"

"What's the matter?" Lucien asks sweetly and it's perfectly obvious that he knows all too well what is the matter. Michel hates him so, so much. "Oh, I forgot your irrational fear of water."

"It's not irrational if you can actually die. You could trip and fall over, fall off the bridge and break your spine."

"It's not _that_ high here," Lucien answers patiently, "but if we took Pont Notre-Dame instead of Pont-au-Change then maybe..."

"Well, you could drown."

"Need I remind you that you can swim?" He gestures at Nina. "And so can she, I assume."

Lucien is having too much fun with this, Michel decides. And if he's paying attention to taunting his brother, then he's not paying attention to Nina. Michel has a good imagination so he can just see Nina slipping from Lucien's grip, falling over and down, and Nina dying, and Nina _dead_ and cold after she's fished out of the water, her blue coat soaking wet and her brown hair matted by the river's dirt, and--

"Nina, come," he says as he extends a shaking hand. Nina wriggles out of Lucien's not sufficiently tight grasp and she runs to Michel, takes his hand and squeezes. Lucien seems disappointed that the 'let's make fun of little brothers' fest is over.

"It's not easy to accidentally fall off a bridge, Michel," Lucien says moodily once they've got off the bridge and Michel breathes in relief. "You would actually have to make an effort to _jump_ off it."

"And you would know how?"

"I work on Ile de la Cité, there are six bridges here, things happen, you know."

They get to the appellate court and when they do, a nervous young woman runs out of the building and whispers something into Lucien's ear. Lucien curses loudly and shakes his head.

"Seems I won't be seeing the dinosaurs with you after all," he says and reaches into his suitcase. He takes out the slim file and hands it to Michel. "A short report on what your disaster of a man was doing in M-sur-M. No need to thank me."

"You need to stop that," Michel eyes the file suspiciously, yet still takes it. "Sébastien is allowed to have secrets in his life. I don't want you snooping."

"Yes, of course he is, and yes, of course you don't." Lucien winks. "He's not having an affair."

Lucien turns on his heel and follows the woman into the building. Nina waves after him and yells 'bye, uncle Lucy!' at the top of her lungs. Lucien cringes, but he doesn't turn back.

"Never thought that he was," Michel mutters to himself and is surprised to realize that it's true.

***

The report doesn't say much so it's clear that it was written by someone recollecting the tale, not someone describing events as they happened. It does mention that Sébastien has asked to see city records and that he was particularly interested in the first two decades of nineteenth century. Under normal circumstances, Michel would have been thrilled to know that Sebatien was finally starting to share his passion for the period.

Now, though, he is mostly confused.

***

One final text comes during his lesson with the _terminale_ class.

_Sorry for the silence, had business in Picardy. I'll be in Paris this weekend. Meet me at La Rose de Sommerard on Sat?_

La Rose de Sommerard, the small Chinese restaurant close to the Sorbonne campus. That's where Sébastien has taken him on that first date, two days after he rescued a priceless book from a common thief's hands. There was something comforting about that place; they always went there for dinner if either of them had wanted to make up for something.

Michel glances at his students. All heads are bowed down, busy with writing the test. They always look down, all apart from his young anarchists. Michel smiles; then the smile fades away as he types.

_Yes._

***

Sometimes it feels like the whole universe has decided to be against Michel and his overcomplicated life.

***

Sébastien is going to be in Paris this weekend. He will see Sébastien this weekend. At this point, he doesn't even care about all the questions and mysteries and the weird. He just misses Sébastien, his laugh, his terrible jokes, the smell of his skin, the way he can always make him laugh. He misses having someone to hold at night. It's been over a month since Sébastien took his coat and took off; Michel just wants to drag him home and he will most certainly do it.

He talks with Mme. Soucy and they agree that Nina will stay with them as Gloria's guest for the weekend (better safe than sorry is Michel's life motto, and he would absolutely hate himself if there turned up an opportunity to spend the night in Paris and he just _couldn't_ ). He even grades the tests the same day he's got them, all in order to make sure that there are no interruptions.

So of course, because the universe hates him for some reason, on a Friday evening a crying Fanny ends up on his doorstep.

***

"My ex has finally drugged himself to death," is all Fanny says and that's enough, the plans are cancelled, the wine is taken out and a couch is prepared. Fanny first tries to apologize and then tries to leave, mumbling out her excuses and sorrys for imposing, but Michel's not having any of that.

Fanny's mother never liked her ex-son-in-law so it's not like Fanny can go and weep on her shoulder. The only other shoulder she has is Michel's and Michel, Michel is a natural caretaker; he can never help himself.

***

Michel has heard the story of Jean Adanet just once, three months after his first meeting Fanny, and was told that he'd never hear it again.

There wasn't much to know about Jean Adanet. His family wasn't particularly poor and has long been residing in Paris. Jean Adanet was born and raised there, he went to school there and was supposed to take over his family's small publishing house one day.

Jean Adanet has met Fanny while studying. They were young, foolish and in love, Fanny has said, knew nothing of each other and decided to spend their entire lives together. They got married very fast, much to the displeasure of their parents. It wasn't a nice marriage and didn't go well, and Jean Adanet was not a particularly stable person. On meds since late teens, at some point he lost control of his life completely. He lost his friends. He lost his wife. In the end, he got disowned and lost his family too.

He didn't lose money to support himself, but Fanny claimed it was due to having a loving old grandfather with Alzheimer's.

"Jean Adanet was and still is the biggest mistake of my life," Fanny has said proudly. "He was a delusional man with a martyr complex and a bunch of imaginary dead friends. I've wasted three years of my life dragging him around hospitals, trying to get him clean, trying to help him before realizing that he simply didn't want to be helped. Now it's over and I'd gladly never talk about this asshole again."

So they never did.

And now, now he was dead.

***

"Are you sad?" Nina asks on the Saturday morning. Fanny is bleary-eyed both from sleep and late-night crying; Nina tugs at her shirtsleeve. "Are you sad because your ex-husband died?"

"I'm not sad because he died," Fanny replies. "I'm pissed off because he died and _that_ makes me sad."

Nina thinks on Fanny's answer, taps her chin, then nods, having accepted that answer.

"Do you want a doll? Sébastien says that dolls can cheer you up if some asshole makes you sad," she says. Michel lets out an outraged whine and scolds Nina for the language and yes, one day soon he and Sébastien will have words about this. Fanny just laughs; she looks at the girl fondly and pats her on the cheek.

"No, thank you, Nina."

Nina smiles brightly.

"I'll bring you one anyway!" She turns on her heel and goes to her room. Fanny looks to Michel with a half-amused, half-baffled expression. Michel waves his hand dismissively.

"Let her," he says. "She has too many of those anyway."

***

The funeral is on Tuesday. Michel is initially surprised at how quickly it's organized; it soon becomes apparent why is that. The Adanets have a family tomb on the Montparnasse Cemetery and they have enough money to make sure that the funeral happens fast and with minimum people in attendance. Standing by the Adanets' family tomb beside Fanny and Nina, and watching the urn containing Jean's ashes being placed inside, Michel manages to count an overwhelming number of five people, the three of them included. The others Fanny recognizes as Jean's mother and Jean's long-suffering doctor. It's both funny and not really, but the doctor seems sadder than the woman; Jean's mother rolls her eyes when the ceremony is over and is the first to leave.

"Jean never got along with his parents," Fanny explains later, when they are strolling through the cemetery. "They got tired of his shit much quicker than I did."

"What about his father?"

"Thomas? A wonderful man, could never understand why the hell I married his son." Fanny shrugs. "He still sends me Christmas cards."

"That's--kind of adorable, I guess." 

They're not in a hurry. Years ago, before he even met Sébastien, Michel used to love walks like this. He used to take Nina to the old cemeteries of Paris; they would walk and walk and observe the history around them, and make up stories of people who died. There were always plenty of old and half-destroyed tombstones with names or dates missing to last them for hours.

"Papa, what about that one?"

Nina points to a grave far on their right. It's old; every stone in this section is old, actually, but this is old and interesting. Michel goes over and crouches next to it, reads the inscription. Soon enough, Nina joins him.

"See this crest?" he points to a small symbol on the stone. Nina nods. "It's an old crest of the Sûreté. This guy was a policeman."

"Fabien Mauri," Nina reads. Her eyes squint as she tries to read the faded date. "Died in 18--"

"I think it says 1864." Or maybe not. Most of these graves have been long forgotten and abandoned, if anyone has ever cared for them in the first place. No one knows who these people were. But maybe--Michel grins at Nina. "What can you tell me about M. Fabien Mauri?"

"He was really, really tall, and bald." Nina's face scrunches up in concentration. "He had a wife and two sons, one of them was ginger. He died--He died of a heart attack."

"Heart attack? Pff." Michel gets up and brushes of some dirt off his trousers. "You can do better than that."

"I'm out of practice."

"What are you guys doing?" Fanny asks. She's looking at them fondly, with a small smile hidden in the corner of her lips.

"Making up stories about people for whom no one cares," Nina replies immediately. She takes Michel's hand. "Papa says that someone should remember."

Fanny raises a brow and suddenly, Michel feels like an idiot.

"What?" he asks. "They were people, they were alive, they deserve someone at least taking two minutes of their time to think about them."

"I'm not saying anything." Fanny shakes her head, then points at a stone on her left. "Fine. That one over there."

"Victor Peltier!" Nina reads out. "The dates are gone."

"Okay, let me think." Victor Peltier. Who were you, Victor Peltier? "He was from the countryside, always wanted to be a policeman. He died," _kicked by a horse_ pops into his head, suddenly, and it's too ridiculous to pass up on, "because he was kicked by a horse."

Fanny bursts out laughing.

"He learnt nothing in that countryside?"

They take turns. Some stories are fun and completely made up; some, not so much, and Michel finds himself explaining the various Parisian revolutions and the toll they've taken on the city. Nina knows most of these half-assed lectures by heart, yet she still listens like mesmerized. For Fanny, every word is new. She gapes and gasps and it's rewarding, to get these reactions. That's what Michel loves about history. That's what he loves about his job. The stories. Their stories, her stories, his stories.

"I dare you to tell us something about that one."

Michel turns his head towards a stone Fanny is pointing at. It's--it's kind of heartbreaking to look at it. It's in a sorry state and it's glaringly obvious that no one has ever visited it, not even when the ground around it was still fresh. All the graves here are old, but the inscriptions on most are still readable, have been repainted and repaired at least once. This one, though. Crap. Just, crap. It's almost impossible to read the dates - Michel thinks that the year of death is 1832 but it might as well be 1882 - and the name… Well. The first name has faded into obscurity years ago and there's almost no trace of it left; the surname is no better, only three first letters are barely visible. Jau--? Jav--?

"Monsieur No-Name Jaufret," Michel starts and silently apologizes the owner of the grave for possibly butchering his name, but it's not like he has a lot to go on, "was a mysterious figure in the Sûreté, its super secret agent only called where everyone else failed. Everything about him was so secret that no one even knew that he died."

"What did he die of?" Nina asks. She bends over the stone and brushes her fingers over the barely-there words. She cares, if only for a moment.

"Broken heart," Michel answers before he can stop himself. Nina straightens and looks at him as if he just grew an extra head. Yeah, that was lame, he admits that.

"Bullshit," Fanny comments. "You can't _die_ of a broken heart. Come up with something better."

Michel rolls his eyes and looks back at the grave. It's just, it's really sad. He tries to imagine M. No-Name Jaufret; he gets a feeling he was not a man who liked spending too much in the sun, or in any bright and happy place, always on the outside.

"He died of a severe allergic reaction to honey."

It's ridiculous. It makes Nina and Fanny giggle. They move on. Michel chances one last glance at the stone; for some reason, it makes him think of Sébastien and that not-exactly-date that he missed on Saturday. Sébastien never called to ask why he hadn't come. Maybe Sébastien didn't come either. Maybe he just didn't care.

He must make a very peculiar face when he thinks about Sébastien because, as always, Nina reads him just right. She slips her small hand into his much bigger one and swings it.

"Papa? Is this how Sébastien's grave is going to end up after you get divorced and he dies because he's miserable and lonely?"

He squeezes her hand.

"No, it's not." He's not going to allow it. "And we're not getting divorced."

"That's unfortunate," Nina sighs. "I was already counting on getting twice as many presents after the divorce."

***

It becomes immediately apparent to Michel, after he unlocks the apartment door on a Thursday evening, that something is wrong. It's not even that the door was locked differently than it was when he and Nina left home in the morning - on Thursdays Nina had ballet class and Michel had individual schooling with a terminally ill student, so Nina had to come back from school and get to the class all by herself and she never remembered to lock the door the way he did; the door was weirdly locked, but it was the presence in the apartment that has set him on edge, and the smell of a roasting chicken coming from the kitchen, and the clutter of pans, and--

Sébastien is standing with his back to Michel, and he hums softly as he rummages through the drawers, most likely in search for a corkscrew, if a bottle of expensive wine standing on the counter is anything to go by.

"What are you doing here?"

It's not that Michel doesn't want him here, _back_ ; he wants that, he wants that more than he's ever wanted anything - save perhaps for Nina's biological parents to lose their rights to her, they never deserved her in the first place - and he's not ashamed of admitting that. It's that, they haven't talked, Sébastien doesn't know about Fanny's husband so he doesn't know why Michel didn't come on Saturday; Sébastien gave no indication of wanting to come home in the foreseeable future - wanting to talk didn't necessarily imply that.

Michel had hoped it did all the same.

"I live here," Sébastien answers without looking up to meet Michel's eyes. "At least I think so, my keys still fit..."

"Of course they fit, it's your apartment."

And it is. It was Sébastien who's bought it; they've chosen it together and then Sébastien had went to the bank and got the money for it from his own private account. Michel could have never afforded such a place - sometimes, it was convenient to be rich, Sébastien could just smile and hand the money and everything would be done - and technically it was Sébastien's property. He wonders, now, what would happen if he and Sébastien were to split; would he have to move out with Nina or would Sébastien be gracious enough to leave this place to them? He never thought about it before; Lucien would call him an idealistic idiot.

"I know it's mine." 

But not theirs.

Sébastien finds the corkscrew, opens the bottle and pours the wine for them. He hands the glasses to Michel and then ushers him out of the kitchen, to the dining room. There are no candles on the otherwise beautifully set table so it's not a date-y thing. When it's a date-y thing, Sébastien never forgets the candles.

Soon enough, Sébastien comes with the dinner. He cuts a piece of the chicken for Michel, and a piece for himself. They eat in an awkward silence which Michel doesn't like; it's different from the way he usually is quiet with Sébastien, this silence is loaded and Michel thinks that, if he tried very hard, he could cut the tense atmosphere with a knife. At one point Michel tries to reach over the table to brush their fingers together, like they always do during dinners. Sébastien almost jumps in surprise and something _else_ , and retracts his hand hastily. Michel wants to say that he didn't wipe his hand off on the tablecloth, but it's not precisely true.

"We need to talk," Sébastien says as he lays down his fork. Michel nods.

"We do." He puts his own cutlery away. Takes a breath. "I'm sorry about Saturday, it's just, Fanny's ex-husband--"

"I know about Marius," Sébastien cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I figured that she'd come to you."

He knows. Michel's brows furrow. He knows?

"How do you know about that?" he asks. He doesn't like the direction his thoughts are heading and he would love a confirmation that he's wrong. "And I'm pretty sure his name was Jean."

"Yeah, it was," Sébastien murmurs. He clears his throat and continues, "I called the ambulance." Michel stares at him, so he clarifies, "I was at his place--when he died."

There's about a million things wrong with this statement, starting with 'why the hell do you call him Marius' and ending with 'what were you doing at a drug-addict's place'. Are you a drug dealer? Were you working undercover? Did you leave to keep us safe? What eventually comes out of Michel's mouth has nothing to do with any of that.

"Fanny didn't tell me."

Sébastien smiles at that. It's his best self-satisfied cop smile, the one he wears when he knows something you don't, when he does something that's not entirely ethical but produces desired results. The one he wears when he cunningly side-steps the law.

"I asked the guys not to include this information in their final report."

Any different day Michel would be appalled by what goes on within the police force and he'd also joke that Lucien is doing a crap job at running the government. Today he's just shocked.

"What were you doing there?"

"That is what we need to talk about." 

Sébastien gets up and motions Michel to follow him into the living room. Michel does. Once they're there, Sébastien not so gently pushes him onto the sofa. Then he picks up a cardboard box that's standing by the wall and puts it onto a coffee table. It's something new. It's a mystery. Michel's hands automatically reach for it and Sébastien bats them away.

"Do you remember the question that I asked you two weeks ago?"

"The reincarnation one?" Sébastien nods. "Yeah, I remember. You know, if you wanted to become a Buddhist you didn't have to--"

"When I first left," Sébastien interrupts him, "I thought I was crazy. There were moments when I actually hoped that I was crazy, because then I could get some pills and get better. But I'm not crazy. I'm _not_. And neither was Marius."

"Marius."

"Jean. Yeah, Jean." Sébastien rolls his eyes. "The dead guy. You know. Cosette's ex-husband."

Cosette's.

"Cosette's." Michel repeats the name, and why does it sound famil--Oh. "So it's your fault."

"What is?"

"Fanny's nickname." Sébastien shakes his head, not understanding. "Fanny accused me of giving her an idiotic nickname, which I didn't, and now it turns that it was you, and I must have picked it up from you, and started calling her that, and--"

"You called Fanny 'Cosette'," Sébastien rather states than asks, and there's a curious hopeful glint in his eyes. He pats the box and it turns Michel's attention back towards it.

"What's inside the box?"

Sébastien takes a deep breath.

"History."

And that's it, that's enough, Michel grabs the box before Sébastien has the chance to stop him, opens it and greedily takes into all the papers inside. He sees old photos, newspaper articles, a slim leather-bound journal at the very bottom of the box, and what curiously looks like--

"Are those official government papers?" He asks. "Christ, are those records from an actual archive?"

"Yeah."

Michel almost drops the box. It's only Sébastien's reflex that saves it from landing gracelessly on the floor. Michel scrambles to his feet.

"I can't touch those! They're old! They're nineteenth-century old! I don't have proper gloves! We don't have proper conditions to keep those in! _Oh my God_ , did you _steal_ them?!"

"I borrowed them without waiting for a permission." Michel lets out what sounds like a desperate wail. "I'm sure your brother can take care of this."

"Lucien all but hates you, he won't take care of this!" He gapes at Sébastien. "Christ, you stole from the government. What if you lose your job? What if you _go to jail_? I don't want you to go to jail!"

"That's new," Sébastien says, like it's a private bad joke between them. 

"What is that supposed to mean?"

They stare at each other for a few minutes, and then Sébastien lurches, grabs him and kisses him. It's certainly not the most surprising thing today, but definitely nicest of all the surprises. It beats the coldness and tension and awkwardness. It beats coming home to an apartment which isn't empty. It even beats Sébastien making him dinner. The kiss itself... It's neither gentle nor loving, it's desperate and more than a little angry. It's _new_.

"Damn it," Sébastien whispers as he pulls back. "Still feels right."

Michel blinks.

"Why wouldn't it?"

Sébastien laughs, but there's no humour in it.

"Because I remember. Who I was the last time. Who you were the last time." He runs a hand over his face. "Past lives. I used to think it was bullshit, just like religion and God and stuff, and then I remembered. It came in bits and pieces, but I remembered everything. That's why I left, because I had to know for sure if I was going insane. I wasn't. It's all there, everything's there."

He points at the box, carries on.

"Imagine suddenly having a full set of someone else's memories and feelings. That's what happened to me. Marius had a theory that some people subconsciously wanted to remember, wanted their past selves to be known, and who the fuck knows, maybe he was right, or maybe not, he was too stoned to properly form sentences most of the time. The point is, I know. And then, _you_. You have no idea what it felt like, to remember and to see you, _you_ , again, as always. And you don't remember, while I do, and it is so suffocating. I died and was reborn and you are _still here_. Everywhere I go and turn, you're _there_. Feels tragically unfair and is fucking tiring."

"Stop that," Michel mutters weakly. He doesn't want to hear this, he wants Sébastien to stop, stop, he needs to _stop_. "I don't--I don't know-- _Please_. Just, stop that."

"I went to Toulon, and to Montreuil. I've read the files and reports, and newspapers. You know what I found? Me and you, a prisoner and a guard, a pray and a hunter, always like that. Can't I fucking get a break? Can't I just once get rid of Inspector Javert?" 

Somewhere in the apartment, the front door is opened and then closed. Michel sobs. At least he thinks he sobs. Sébastien has stopped talking, finally, _finally_.

"What's going on?" Nina asks suspiciously. "Why is papa crying?"

"You wouldn't understand," Sébastien mutters and gets up. "I can't stay here, so I asked Francis if I could crash at his. We'll... We'll talk."

"Yeah, we'll talk," Michel says to the floor. Sébastien leaves. Nina cautiously sits down on the sofa, right next to him.

"Papa? Are you all right?"

"No," Michel shakes his head, "I don't think I am."

***

_The handcuffs are heavy and the water is black and cold, a bottomless whirlpool. He's afraid and he wants to scream (helpsomeonepleasehelppleaseplease) and he tries, and the water around him is cold and muddy, but it burns his lungs and it hurts, it hurtshurtshurts and that's precisely what he deserves and--_

***

He sits up with a gasp. His heart is racing wildly, blood pounds in his ears and he's _terrified_. It was a nightmare he's never had before, it was cold and black, yes, but all the finer details slip away, they're gone and black and cold is what's left of it.

"Papa."

Michel blinks and focuses his gaze on Nina's concerned face. She's sitting on the bed and gripping his t-shirt tightly. Looks like she's been tugging at it.

"Nina."

"You were screaming," Nina explains her presence in the master bedroom. "You were trashing on the bed and I couldn't wake you."

"Sorry." He wraps his arm around her and tugs her close, hugs her tightly. He kisses the top of her head. "Sorry."

"I'll stay here with you if you don't mind," Nina whispers as she settles next to him and allows him to pull the covers over her. "In case something happens."

"Of course."

He doesn't sleep any more that night. He watches over Nina until he's sure she's deeply asleep; then he slips out of the bed, grabs a pair of surgical gloves - leftovers from that first aid training course he and Fanny took last year - and pads into the living room where he sits on the sofa and looks intently at Sébastien's box.

That box is history. That box is everything. Michel takes a deep, steadying breath. Time to make a decision.

He reaches inside.

***

Michel calls in sick the next day. Fanny phones him the moment she finds out, asking about his health, offering to come over and spend time with him, offering to pick Nina up, being a good friend. She asks if something happened and Michel tells her that no, nothing happened. What else is he supposed to tell her? About him and Sébastien and even her ex, about how he feels that his mind is going to explode any moment now?

He tells her that everything's fine, that he has a mild food poisoning and that she worries needlessly. She believes him; Michel is grateful that they weren't talking face-to-face, then she'd immediately know that he lied. He's an awful liar, as Sébastien often reminds him.

Then he calls Sébastien. His partner picks up the moment the call goes through, as if he was waiting for the phone to ring. Michel asks him to come to home and Sébastien says that he'll be there in twenty minutes. He's not back at work, it appears. Over the past month Michel has wondered how exactly it worked, Sébastien just leaving like that; but the answer was rather simple, wasn't it? Sébastien hasn't taken a day off in work for seven years, prior to meeting Michel; he had so much holiday-time accumulated that he could afford to just go off like that. If Michel was right, Sébastien could just disappear and it would take six months for his boss to start wondering if maybe something happened to him.

He's sitting on the sofa when Sébastien enters the apartment. He calls out from the living room and waits for Sébastien to come. They regard each other for a moment, before Sébastien lets out a breath he was apparently holding. His eyes dart to the box. The content is rearranged. Sébastien smiles.

"You looked inside," he says and sounds pleased. Michel isn't sure why he would sound pleased.

"I did," he admits. "I ordered everything chronologically and put the official documents in a file, this way they won't get dirty or worse, destroyed."

"And?"

"And nothing. I didn't read them."

Sébastien's eyes widen in surprise. Then narrow as he gets angry.

"What?"

"I said I didn't read them." Michel gets up, takes the box and puts it in Sébastien's arms. "And now I kindly ask you to take this away."

Sébastien takes the box and angrily dumps it back onto the coffee table. Michel rolls his eyes. That's not how you treat such old documents, but Sébastien will never learn to value them.

"Why?" Sébastien asks. "Why didn't you read? That's our history. That's _your_ life, inside this box."

"No, it's not. It's the life of someone who died almost two centuries ago. I don't need to read that to know who I am." He puts his hands on his chest. "My name's Michel Gaillard. My parents were named Phillippe and Aurelie, I have a brother named Lucien, I'm a history teacher. That's me."

"But that's not _everything_ there is!"

"So what?! I don't need to know that! I don't need to remember!"

"You called Fanny 'Cosette'," Sébastien argues, "so you already remember something. Why not the rest, too?"

"I might have picked it up from you!"

They both know he didn't. Christ.

"Why." Michel tries to move, but Sébastien crowds him. " _Why_?"

"Because _I don't want to_!" Michel pushes him away and starts pacing, gesturing wildly. "I don't want to remember, I don't want to know! You say that I-- _he_ \--hunted you. And what if he ruined your life? What if--what if it wasn't just you? What if I ruined someone else's life too? What if I was a murderer? What if I--what if I was just a fucking _bad person_? I don't need to know that. I don't want to know that!"

"And if it comes back all by itself?" Sébastien's voice gets really cold. Michel shivers involuntarily.

"I guess I'll cross that bridge if I get to it." Fuck, he hates bridge metaphors. "But not before. I know who I am. And you know what? I like my life. I don't want to lose it."

That baffles Sébastien.

"Why would you--"

"Look at you!" Michel gestures at him. "Or, better yet, think about Fanny's ex-husband. He remembered his past life, right?" Sébastien nods. "And he was a drug addict! Didn't it ever occur to you that maybe he was a drug addict _because_ he remembered? Because his past life was so awful and miserable that he couldn't cope with those memories and thought it better to get lost in his current one? Fanny told me about him, he completely lost his grip on reality! He drugged himself to death! _I don't want to end up like that!_ I won't--" 

He takes a deep breath.

"I won't end up like that," he says finally.

"You're a coward," Sébastien decides.

"Perhaps." Michel pushes the box towards Sébastien. He doesn't even want to touch it. He thinks he might be sick. "But if choosing the life that I have over something that happened two hundred years ago is cowardice then I'm _fine_ with that."

Sébastien grabs the box.

"You did ruin lives," he says viciously. He goes to the hall where he fumbles to reach the keys to his bike. "And you refuse to face the truth."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

The worst part is that Sébastien's right and they both know it.

***

He thinks about calling Fanny. He decides it's a bad idea. He calls Lucien instead.

 _"This better be important, brother,"_ Lucien says once he picks up. _"I'm in a meeting, the Ministry of Justice won't run itself."_

"Could you come?" he asks. "I could--I could use a brother right now."

 _"Christ, Michel,"_ Lucien hisses. _"I have more important things--"_

Of course he has.

"I think my life might be falling apart," Michel says. "So please, could you come and be supportive for once? I never asked you for anything before, never, not even after mum died."

A beat. There's a silence on the other side of the call and then,

 _"We're done here,"_ Lucien says. Michel resists the urge to throw the phone against the wall. He imagines it to be Lucien's head.

"Fuck you," he spits out, "and sorry for interrupt--"

 _"Oh, I wasn't talking to you,"_ Lucien cuts in. There's a shuffle on the other side and what sounds like a click of a leather suitcase being closed. _"I've just kicked Christiane out of my office, hope you're proud of me."_ He sighs. _"I'll be at your place in half an hour, okay, just wait and don't do anything stupid."_

He hangs up. Michel stares at his mobile for long minutes.

***

Lucien barges into the apartment and immediately finds himself in the living room, in front of the couch where Michel is still sitting with a blank expression. He kneels on the floor and takes one of Michel's hands into his own.

"Okay, I'm here," he breathes. "What do I do now? Are you going to cry?"

"No," Michel answers. As if he'd ever allow himself to cry in front of Lucien. Ha. Never.

"What did that asshole do?"

It's funny how Lucien assumes on the spot that it was Sébastien who was in the fault here. Michel thinks about the answer and about what he can tell him. Not the truth, that much is clear. This whole thing--it's ridiculous. It's impossible. It's completely mad. And Michel still believes in it, wholeheartedly.

Which is the worst part.

"We had a disagreement," Michel says finally, "over something--of great importance. I don't see how our differences can be resolved."

"Is there anything I can do?" Lucien asks. It's awkward. He tries. "He stole documents from the city archives in Toulon, I can have him arrested and thrown in jail if that would make you feel better."

Michel doesn't even ask how the hell Lucien knows; it's probably the same way Lucien seems to know everything. Still, it's the intentions that count. He allows himself a small smile.

"I don't want you to put him in jail." His thumb rubs a circle in the skin of Lucien's hand. "Sorry I called, it was a stupid idea."

"Hey, hey." Lucien moves, takes his face in his hands and forces him to meet his eyes. "It wasn't a stupid idea. I want to help, it's just--I have no idea what to do with a kid. I never did."

"I'm not a kid anymore, I'm thirty-two."

Lucien shakes his head fondly and doesn't let go. It's the longest they've been touching each other since Michel was seven.

"Of course you are, idiot. You're my baby brother. You're always going to be my baby brother." Lucien stops. One of his hands finds its way into Michel's hair and starts stroking. "I know I'm not supportive. I know that I don't particularly care about other people's feelings. I know that I'm always busy and putting my work, the government, above everything else. I know that I'm obsessive and that all of this combined makes me a truly shitty relative to have."

Michel doesn't argue. He can't, not when what Lucien says is completely true.

"But still, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Even if it meant having Bonner at Christmas dinner; I tolerate him because of the way he makes you smile. You haven't smiled like that since mum died." He tugs Michel closer and down, so that his head rests against Lucien's shoulder. "I'm not perfect and there are many things I wish I could change. And I know it might be difficult to believe, but I do love you. I would do anything for you."

Michel sniffs. Trust Lucien to spontaneously develop a heart when he least expects him to.

"There are worse relatives to have," he murmurs and Lucien's body shakes with a perfectly contained laughter.

"I think you should move to Paris," he says quietly and Michel immediately straightens up. Oh no, he's not going back to this now-- "No! I mean, you should move in with me, temporarily. I don't think you should stay at this apartment, at least not now."

"I would move in with Nina," Michel reminds. "You hate Nina."

"I don't hate Nina. Seriously. As if I could truly hate anyone who makes you happy. Nina and I--we have an understanding. Mutual assured destruction, you could say."

Lucien looks expectant and his eyes sparkle with mirth. It's unusual. Everything lately is so new.

"I'll think about it," Michel promises. He already knows he'll say yes.

***

The next two months are tiring. Commuting to Montreuil is a nightmare. Living in Paris is a nightmare; he thinks that, one day, he might snap and Lucien will end up bloody in a morgue and he in jail. Nina keeps asking when they'll go back home. He hasn't spoken to Sébastien since that morning so he has no answer to that.

The most troubling is the knowledge.

Sometimes, Michel finds himself walking the street and observing people and wondering who they were, once. Did he know them? Did they know him? Sometimes, he looks at his students and wonders as well. Sometimes, he looks at Fanny, talking about her new writer boyfriend, and almost wishes he knew who Cosette was. Almost, but not really.

The little anarchists and the whole _terminale_ class prepare to graduate and the staff already feels nostalgic. The school will be much quieter and dull without them, nobody wants to see them gone; the boys seem reluctant to leave as well. One day - not the day of their last lesson, but close, too close - Michel finds a small package on his desk. He unwraps it and stares and then smiles at the content. A historically accurate cockade, even the fabric used to made it is right. He looks up at the class and notices wide grins on several faces. His little anarchists, of course, who else would find it funny. He pins the cockade to his shirt, and the class erupts in laughter. It's only then that he notices a small piece of paper attached to the wrapping.

'You're awesome', it says.

He doesn't take the cockade off for the remainder of the day.

***

"I'm telling you so that you won't complain later that I didn't tell you."

Fanny pats him on the shoulder. He frowns.

"Telling me what?"

She doesn't answer, just goes back to the teachers' lounge. He shrugs. She'll tell him when she feels like it. Only, it turns out not to be necessary at all.

Sébastien is leaning against his bike right in front of the school entrance. He straightens when he notices Michel in the doorway.

"Hi," he says simply.

"Hey."

Sébastien thrusts his hands into his pockets. He balances on the balls of his feet for a moment.

"So I've been thinking," he starts, "that I approached this whole thing from the wrong perspective. I was so busy thinking that we've met again that I completely didn't think about the fact that _we've met again_. It was quite a revelation when it dawned on me."

"What you're saying makes no sense at all."

"Okay, let me start again." He draws a deep breath. "There are seven billion people on this planet, sixty-five million living in France alone. And it just happened that we were both on that street that day. It just happened that you got robbed and that I punched that thief in the face, which, by the way, is poetically ironic in ways you'll never comprehend. And it _just_ happened. Seriously, what are the chances? Technically, it could have been anyone. Anyone could have caught that guy. And I could have fallen in love with someone completely different, someone completely not you. I could have picked up a barista. I could have bumped into a hot guy during a holiday in Bali."

"You'd never go on holiday in Bali," Michel reminds. He can't help himself. If this is going where he thinks it's going, he likes that direction very much.

"Irrelevant," Sébastien waves his hand. "The point is, it could have been anyone. But it wasn't anyone. It was _you_. I don't believe in God and whatever, but I like to think that everything still happens for a reason. Like… destiny, you know?" 

"I know."

And he does. God, he does. That day on the street, when his fingers brushed Sébastien's and when he looked into his eyes. That was love at first sight. In that moment he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this man.

"I'm fucked up," Sébastien declares. "I was pretty fucked up before all that, with my parents and shit, but I'm plenty fucked up now. And you're right, by the way. About us having our own lives. About us not being _them_. Well, we're not them. I'm Sébastien, you're Michel. You're you and I'm me."

"See?" Michel resists the urge to shake his head. "It wasn't that difficult to admit."

"It's not easy," Sébastien carries on as he pushes off the bike and takes a few steps closer to where Michel is standing at the top of the stairs. "Okay, separating memories is easy. Emotions, not so much. Sometimes I get sad or regretful and I'm not sure if it's me or if it's a residue thing. Sometimes I get angry. Well, with anger it's mostly me, but Valjean did have a few issues himself."

He stops two steps lower than Michel and, thanks to that, they're almost the same height. Michel doesn't have to look up and Sébastien doesn't have to look down.

"Sometimes I get really moody and then I think I understand why Marius did drugs so enthusiastically. And _then_ I remember that he was a poor bastard who wasn't even half as lucky as I am and that he had nothing to hold onto." Sébastien's fingers brush the soft skin of Michel's wrist. "I do. There's a lot of things I have trouble processing, not saying otherwise, but if there's anything that I know is one hundred percent pure _me_... it's that I love you. Always will."

He looks expectantly. Then frowns when Michel fails to react.

"Say something," he prompts, "because I'm starting to feel like an idiot."

Michel grabs him by the collar and smashes their lips together. It seems to be enough of a response because Sébastien grunts in appreciation and deepens the kiss.

"That might have been the sweetest and most romantic thing you've ever said to me," Michel breathes into Sébastien's ear.

"Yeah, I've given myself diabetes."

"Ruining it," Michel warns. Sébastien grins.

"So, Monsieur Gaillard? A dinner, maybe? I could take you out for dinner," he says. "Or maybe we could all just go home and I'd make you dinner myself?"

Michel thinks about it. Nina would breath a sigh of relief at coming back home, to her room and her toys and her goldfish - he hopes Sébastien didn't forget to feed it. He wouldn't have to drive to work from Paris everyday. He wouldn't have to see Lucien everyday and suffer his ungodly routines and annoying habits and irritating opinions. He wouldn't have to worry about becoming a murderer the next time Lucien opens his mouth.

"Option number two, if you may."

Sébastien smiles. Michel smiles back.

***

As Sébastien said, it's not always easy.

They still argue, of course, and sometimes, in the heat of the moment, Sébastien yells that Michel knows nothing about him. Michel is tempted, then, to just sit down and let Sébastien talk - he's very empathic, told from an early age by variety of elderly relatives how important talking about one's feelings is - but he never does as that's not what they agreed on. Maybe if his upbringing was different he wouldn't care so much about making people feel good, and maybe then he wouldn't feel so guilty.

On those nights Sébastien usually sleeps on the sofa and in the morning comes apologizing for his insensitivity. Michel wishes he could do something; he wishes he could just find Sébastien a therapist, like any normal person would. But their circumstances are not normal and they already know how having a therapist might end, in a funeral attended by five people. He mentions the problem to Lucien, in an oblique way.

"Buy him a diary," Lucien grumbles, unhappy to be interrupted in his oh so important work for the benefit of the country.

Michel does. It's a thick and beautiful book in a leather-bound cover. Sébastien laughs at him at first, but then he starts scribbling in it like a madman. He stops snapping at Michel during the arguments, preferring to retreat to the bedroom to lock himself up for half an hour to write.

It's both infinitely better and worse. 

Sébastien is in a habit of leaving his stuff everywhere around the apartment and the diary - journal, he insists it's a journal - is no exception. Michel's gaze is automatically drawn to it whenever it's lying close. He can't help it, he's a curious person by nature and Sébastien and his journal are like a living and breathing _history_. Michel thirsts for knowledge, for different views and opinions and judgments of facts because nothing in the world is straightforward, and the perspective on historical events buried in that journal would be priceless. He often finds himself holding the closed book, thumbing its spine and never quite daring to open its pages.

"Will you stop that," Sébastien says one evening as he plucks the journal from his hands. "It doesn't matter what's inside."

He's right, of course. It doesn't matter.

What matters is Nina's laugh when Sébastien brings her home the puppy she's been talking about for months. What matters is Lucien's affectionate grumbling as he hands Michel Nina's adoption papers without telling him prior that those exist in the first place. What matters is Fanny's grin when she announces that she's getting married to this writer she's been dating and that she wants Michel to be her bridesman. What matters is that Nina gets to be a flower girl, and that Sébastien is way too excited about the whole wedding, and that Fanny's mother drinks vodka with Michel like the best of them. What matters is Charles, the leader of Michel's little anarchists, coming to his office after the end of the year and hugging him tightly in surprise, showing him an acceptance letter from Sorbonne and saying, "you changed my life".

That is the best day of Michel's career, that is the precise reason why he's always wanted to be a teacher. He wanted to take kids' lives and help them make them better, help them shape their futures into something extraordinary. And even if only one kid - from hundreds that passed through Michel's class over the years - is going to say that, it's still a success, it's still a victory. One is enough to make it worth.

"You're grinning today," Sébastien notices during dinner. Nina plays with her puppy and tries to feed him off the table when she thinks her parents won't notice. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Michel replies. "Life's good."

And, in the end, that's what matters most, the three of them, smiling and content. Life's good. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's his and he made it into what it is today, and he intends to live it for all that it's worth.


	2. Spoilery Author's Commentary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The commentary you didn't want or need, with a full list of characters and a brief explanation of how they came to life.

** Spoilery Author's Commentary **

The vague idea of what this fic will be about came to me after I've seen a few reincarnation prompts (including the one that I ultimately filled). What gave me a pause was the fact that, at least to me, those stories were no different from modern!AUs - the only substantial difference was the fact that the characters had/regained their memories. That made me think; after all, reincarnation doesn't really work like that, right? You're not born again into the same person with the same background and personality. Sure, some things are constant, and yes, you can end up in the same circumstances, but that's not a given, is it? So I decided to write a reincarnation!AU that I would want to read, a reincarnation!AU where everything is different. It started very simply, with just one sentence of a note to myself: "make them think that Javert is Valjean". Yeah, I admit, that's kind of mean. But I still think it's funny as hell.

I had the premise and an outline of the plot. All I needed now were the characters. And, man, did I spend a lot of time on those characters.

 **Michel Gaillard (Javert)**  
From the very beginning I knew that I would focus on Javert. He was my POV character, he was going to be the person dealing with the plot - which was the regaining of memories by one party and not the other. When I had that settled, I immediately knew that it won't be Michel who's getting the memories back. In order to show how different my characters are from their past selves, I needed an unbiased perspective. I needed someone as confused by everything as the reader hopefully will be.

Next step was deciding on who Michel is. I took my understanding of Javert as a character and tried to boil him down to some specific traits that would never change. In the end, it's his passion and devotion that turned out to be his main characteristics; everything else, I believe, was the result of his life circumstances and upbringing. Michel wasn't born in prison and never thought himself to be outside of society; Michel is a younger son of a remotely happy couple (even if his father died even before Michel was born) and he was always the baby of the family, the one everyone cooed at and snuggled and loved. He was raised by a variety of distant relatives, true, but those distant relatives taught him empathy, taught him that emotions are important in everyone's life, taught him to value everything and everyone. Michel had the luxury to allow himself to be caring and kind, something that Javert lacked.

I had an idea of who Michel was. Next came the job. I toyed with a few ideas, but a teacher was something that I particularly liked. Michel likes kids, it's his goal to help as many students make their lives into something worthwhile as he can, and the most rewarding thing he can hear is someone saying "you've made my life better". Partially it's because I'm a teacher and that's my motivation too; partially because of the barricade. Saying that Javert is responsible for Les Amis' deaths is both downplaying their decisions and exaggerating Javert's actual position and abilities, but I do think he was at the very least unsettled by the massacre. Those kids were young, it was such a waste, their deaths. So I thought that it would be interesting, to have that feeling carry onto Michel, to make it a deep subconscious motivation for him. He wants to shape his kids' futures, he wants to help change their lives for the better. After I decided on a teaching career for Michel, choosing the subject was easy. History. Of course it had to be history. Michel turned into a history teacher fascinated by 19th century, with a "curious barricade fetish".

I tried to drop hints of Michel's past identity. Michel likes order. He hates bridges, which is first hinted at in the argument he has with Sébastien, the one after which Sébastien leaves, and then is featured more heavily during his walk in Paris with Lucien and Nina (they even take Pont-Au-Change in order to get to the Ile, has anyone noticed that?). Michel's fear of flowing water is another residue thing, of course, and doesn't have anything to do with Lucien's prank; the only reason that Michel even thinks that is that his mind needs a rational explanation to this irrational fear and the mattress incident is the only thing that qualifies. And then there's the Batman tee. It's symbolical too because Batman is not only a justice fighter who operates in the shadows, it's also the second identity of Bruce Wayne, the regular guy. Javert was Batman, the dark knight. Michel is just Bruce Wayne, the man no one suspects of anything.

The last hints was the cemetery scene. Here I admit that I kind of bullshitted my way through it as I have never been in Paris and only relied on the information given to me by my friend who has. What I know about Montparnasse cemetery is that it's old and that many policemen are buried there. It seemed like a fitting place and allowed me to include the grave-hunting scene. Ah, the grave-hunting, one of the joys of my childhood. The game Michel and Nina are playing, I do it too. I go around cemeteries and read inscriptions and try to think of who those people were. I wanted Michel and Nina to go grave-hunting too and I wanted Michel to stumble upon Javert's grave. The lack of first name is a nod towards M. Hugo (the troll writer that he was) while the sorry state of the stone is a nod to how lonely and miserable Javert was (also a contrast to how Michel turned out). Inclusion of this scene allowed me to drop a hint of another residue thing - Michel's impression of "M. Jaufret" and his almost immediate answer that he died of a broken heart.

The last hint was hidden in the name (it's more of a homage to the musical, but still). Michel. As in the archangel Michael, the one with the sword of flames. The one who protects God's law and who casts out a rebellious Lucifer. The lawful one. The obedient one. The one who never doubts.

 **Sébastien Bonner (Valjean)**  
Ah, Sébastien. The poor guy who suffered a sudden influx of someone else's memories just because he was not Michel and therefore had to.

Let's start with a name this time; it's less hint-y, but I still giggled when I chose it. The name "Sébastien" comes indirectly from ancient Greek word "sebastos", which in turn means "venerable". "Venerable" according to my dictionary means "accorded a great deal of respect, esp. because of age, wisdom, or character". I thought it would fit Valjean, especially the one from the end of the Brick. So that's it when it comes to Sébastien's name - more of an inside joke than a clue.

Sébastien Bonner. I knew that if I were to fool people into thinking that Michel was Valjean, I had to give Sébastien superficial similarities to Javert, hence the job and his dedication to it. Sébastien is hardened, proud and bitter. Sounds like Javert. But, later on, we learn that Sébastien has witnessed the murder of his parents. Sébastien was left alone after his parents died: he was an only child with no relatives whatsoever, no one to care for or to care for him, no one to ground him and make him human. He was an angry teenager with only money and questions for company. In a way, Sébastien is the Valjean who never met Bishop of Digne. He thought that the police was his answer and he joined, and turned into this filthy rich man living in Spartan conditions, one who grins at people until they go away and leave him alone.

And then he remembers, and it's a whole new set of confusing emotions. First he is confused; then, when he finally figures something out, he reacts with panic, in a way Valjean would: "something happened, MUST BE JAVERT!". He tells Michel that he wished he was crazy and he did; he took off on his roadtrip only to find out if any of that was true. Sébastien went to Montreuil-sur-Mer and Toulon for obvious reasons and later visited Picardy, which is the region where Valjean was born and raised.

Sébastien is smart and he's not above side-stepping the law if he truly wants something. In M-sur-M a nice archivist tells him that he's not the first person to ask for these particular records and this sends Sébastien on a hunt for one Jean Adanet. Trail leads him to Paris and that's where they meet, after Sébastien has not exactly legally obtained Jean's phone number and address. Thus happens the meeting with Jean/Marius. Sébastien stays at Jean's place for a few days during which they talk Jean's theories. In the end, Sébastien is there when Jean ODs and he is the one to call the ambulance. He calls in some favors in the Parisian police and has his name removed from the scene report. 

Enough about the deleted scenes. We have Sébastien trying to deal with the memories and the residue in a way that will allow him to come back to his own life. Sébastien represents the middle ground between Michel's complete denial of the past and Jean Adanet's embracing it and subsequent drowning in it. He tries because - in the end - he recognizes that he has people to try for.

What I wanted to emphasise in this fic - and what is stressed twice by Sébastien - is the concept of destiny and how it mingles with coincidences and choice. The "some things have to happen", the "some people are bound to meet" versus "we make our own lives". Both are true, of course. Some people are bound to meet but what they do with that meeting is still up to them. You can find your soulmate but it won't mean anything if you don't pursue them. Sébastien's initial mistake is that he took the destiny thing and looked at it negatively. He assumed the angry and distasted position when saying "oh my God, it's him again". It takes him few months to understand that he should be amazed instead of angry, that it should be an awed "oh my God, it's him again". Because what does it mean when the universe keeps putting the same person on your path? Furthermore, even if we take "some people are bound to meet", it's still borderline impossible. As Sébastien says - there are six billion people on the planet. There are sixty-five million people inhabiting France. He could have never met Michel. But he did. So there must have been a Reason.

Fun fact: I toyed with the idea that the killer of Monsieur and Madame Bonner is Thénardier, but decided not to go in that direction and leave the killing of Sébastien's parents a mystery. It's up to you to decide if it was Thénardier or not.

 **Lucien Gaillard (Enjolras)**  
He is dedicated and obsessive, and often insensitive. He's a leader. That's what I took from Enjolras and gave Lucien.

In the very first draft Michel was an only child; when I started writing Lucien suddenly appeared and I couldn't for the life of me say why the hell I haven't included him in my original plan. He was so essential to Michel's character. He was perhaps the biggest influence on Michel's life: him not taking Michel in after their mother's death, them being polar opposites, their sibling rivalry that doesn't negate the undercurrent of love and affection, Lucien's constant criticism that only pushed Michel harder in his chosen direction.

Lucien is ten years older than Michel; while that doesn't seem much when one is thirty-two and the other forty-two, it's a giant unbridgeable gap when one is nine and the other nineteen and their mother suddenly dies. By the time Aurelie Gaillard has bit the dust, Lucien was studying, making his future, carving a place in the government for himself. He couldn't take in a kid brother; and even if he could, he would be a terrible parental figure. He never has time, he doesn't really care all that much. He allowed Michel to be bumped from a relative to another, and it wasn't a bad decision - Michel stayed the baby of the family that everyone loves; with Lucien, he'd slip into the role of the brat you wish wasn't there.

Lucien's relationship with Michel is strained and I admit to having been influenced by the relationship between BBC!Mycroft and BBC!Sherlock. Lucien is a French BBC!Mycroft caricature - he's the government personified, he's the agent of the Republic. (Which seems fitting for a man who fought for the republic, doesn't it?) Lucien cares for his baby brother in bizarre ways because he doesn't know how to do it otherwise; where Michel is kind and empathic, Lucien is insensitive and often cold.

Why Enjolras for the role? Well. Think about it. Lucien. Who is Michel's opposite. Lucien for Lucifer, the brightest of angels who dared to doubt, the one who rebelled, the one whom Michael cast out.

Fun fact: The Christiane that Lucien kicks out of office is Christiane Taubira, the current Minister of Justice in France.

 **Nina (Éponine)**  
I chose Éponine for two reasons, one of which comes from the other. First of all, I simply adore the idea that's been bouncing around fandom, of Javert and Éponine, of Éponine being Javert's adopted baby!Justice. Secondly, I thought it a nice parallel of Valjean and Cosette.

Also, admittedly, I wanted to give Éponine a nicer life. She still has shitty biological parents but she also has Michel who takes care of her, who takes her in after her parents go to jail and who, in the end, gets to adopt her and give her a life that she deserves. Nina is a resolute child. In the first version of the fic I had a scene in which she makes good on her promise to "pee on everything Sébastien loves" if he hurts Michel - granted, it didn't involve any peeing, but Nina did drop the keys to Sébastien's prized bike to the Seine.

Fun fact: Nina likes Fanny and secretly inspires to be like her when she grows up.

 **Fanny Roche (Cosette)**  
It started out as a joke. I told myself that it would be funny if I made Cosette into Michel's best friend instead of Fantine (at some point it was supposed to be Fantine) and then I went and did exactly that. My reasoning was simple: I thought that any version of Cosette would resonate better with a kind and genuinely nice person than a bitter and oft acidic one. Plus there was always the irony of Cosette being closer to Javert and disliking Valjean.

As for Fanny's relationship with Jean Adanet... Their divorce came naturally to me; I couldn't imagine Cosette sticking in a toxic relationship that was destroying her and I did picture her as strong enough to leave. So that's what Fanny did; Jean Adanet was with her mainly because she reminded him of some other girl (Fanny here of course doesn't know that Jean Adanet has embraced his inner Marius and that he sees Cosette in her) and she couldn't stand that. She didn't want to stay in a relationship that was making her unhappy so she left. As for her breakdown when Jean died - just like she told Nina, she wasn't sad because he died, she was sad because it pissed her off that he died. It was the emotional anger of someone who can't believe that they still care, that they wasted so much time trying to help and that the other person didn't want to be helped, that they still couldn't have been bothered to sort out their life.

Fanny strongly dislikes people who mistreat their respective partners and that's the reason why she threatens Sébastien into calling Michel that first time. That's why there was also a scene in which she was at Michel's place spending the evening with him and Sébastien came, and Fanny kicked him out because he'd hurt her friend and she didn't want him around making any more mess. Ultimately I had to cut it down because it simply wasn't working, though it did involve some interesting dialogue between Fanny and Sébastien-who-remembered.

Fun fact: Fanny and Michel like to get drunk together and dance on the table to ABBA hits. This was also a scene I had to cut because it was too ridiculous.

 **Felicia Roche (Fantine)**  
Fanny's mother who maybe doesn't remember everything, but has a vague idea of what once happened to her. The one person who got a full upgrade in this life: a great job, a wonderful husband, lovely daughter, house with a white picket fence. She reacts with hostility to Michel because she recognizes him as someone who'd wronged her in this past life; she quickly sees that Michel is nothing like Javert (superficially) and she warms up to him, enough to be really nice about him being Fanny's bridesman and a witness at her wedding, and enough to drink Michel under the table at the reception because she can hold her vodka while he can't.

Fun fact: Felicia is married to a nice florist Jacques, who is this century's version of Tholomyes. This time around, Tholomyes is not a douche and Felicia is the love of his life.

 **Jean Adanet (Marius)**  
Perhaps the only person who ended up worse than the last time - but it's mostly his own damn fault, he started out fine. I needed a person who'd waste their live after regaining memories and Marius seemed like a good fit. A sole survivor of the barricade, with a bunch of dead friends, burdened with guilt over not inquiring more into Valjean's past, over letting a man waste away, over keeping his beloved away from her father. When Jean managed to dig out his memories (it wasn't a chance accident like it was with Sébastien, Jean kept looking as he felt there was something to look for), they overwhelmed him. He'd spent most of his life in a therapist's office and was constantly on meds. He wanted to remember, but at the same time didn't and that led him to drugs - they didn't make him forget but they made him numb to the emotions connected.

He got together with Fanny because he saw Cosette in her; he never truly got to know Fanny as a person and this contributed to his divorce. He got disowned by his father. He lost all family and friends, started going by "Marius". He started building a private archive of the past and that how he ended up in M-sur-M, trying to track down whatever was left of Valjean/Madeleine. That's how Sébastien ended up on his trail.

Fun fact #1: The box that Sébastien brings home is Jean's. Inside, among the documents and a journal that Jean's been writing since he was a teen, there's a rosary from Madeleine's factory. Good thing Michel didn't look too closely at the content.

Fun fact #2: Originally, Jean was supposed to have a friend at whose place he was crashing and the friend was supposed to be a successful lawyer Grantaire, but I scrapped the idea. Jean inherited some money from elderly grandfather with Alzhaimer's instead.

 **Charles (Gavroche)**  
A last-moment addition to the story was the leader of Michel's little anarchists. That's Gavroche, still foolishly in love with the ideals that are beyond his grasp. Like Michel, he doesn't know - but he sometimes gets this nagging feelings to do something or other and getting the awesome M. Gaillard a cockade seemed like a great idea. 

Charles is going to study international politics or University of Paris' equivalent of that anyway. He wasn't going to go continue education at first but changed his mind after three years spent with Michel. Him saying that Michel changed his life is not an exaggeration; he really did.

I chose Gavroche because I thought it would be sweet. That's it, that's my excuse. Seeing as Gavroche ratted Javert out and then got killed when the National Guard came, I liked the visual of a grown-up Gavroche having Javert as his ultimate role-model and inspiration.

The cockade and Michel's pinning it to his shirt is, of course, a nod towards the movie and a certain _Légion d'honneur_ scene.

Fun fact: At first there was also a flat cap included in the present that the little anarchists leave for Michel. I took the cap out eventually because it seemed like pushing it a bit. Plus, it was too specific and I didn't want Charles to know.


End file.
